


Things That Don't Matter

by Sarah1281



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: I haven't written anything in like a year, It's been two years, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), hard to believe I still love this movie after all this time, not even in the fandom anymore, not yet, now it's just me and my somehow still there interest, talked to one group of people then didn't, then talked to another group of people then didn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23621962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/pseuds/Sarah1281
Summary: Post-Uprising Newt finds that the precursors have cut him off from the parts of himself that feel anything but determination to still enact their plan. There isn't much he can do from the PPDC custody so he waits for any chance to do so. In the meantime there is Hermann. There is always Hermann. That should matter. It isn't allowed to.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Things That Don't Matter

Newt wasted far too much of his time on things that didn’t matter. 

Not that he had any way to verify this but he was pretty sure anyone would agree if they understood the particulars. Then again, he never did understand other people. It seemed every interpersonal problem he ever had came from when he made the mistake of thinking that he did. 

And it wasn’t like he had anything better to spend his time doing. But that didn’t make the self-indulgent musing any less pointless. 

Was he the worst person who had ever lived? 

How much of this was his fault? 

Was he as tortured by this as he should be? 

Was he actually overreacting? 

What did it say about him that genocidal aliens whose only firsthand experience was him and a splash of Hermann were far better at being human than he had ever been? 

Nothing good, that was for sure. 

But then, what did say anything good about him right now? Having saved the world? He had tried really, really hard to fix that. He could probably make some half-hearted arguments about how every day between V-K Day and…What, V-N Day? Victory over Newt? V-F? Victory at Fiji? V-K 2 just seemed derivative and not even true. There were only three of them and then one. V-M? 

Victory over Megakaiju? 

Well that just made it seem so small. Victory over one thing. Kind of a lame thing to celebrate. 

Humans celebrated all sorts of lame things. His birthday doubled as World Quark Day and National Popcorn Day!

And it wasn’t _really_ a victory over the Megakaiju, was it? Not a victory over his big, beautiful creation dead before it’s time. It was stronger than ANY of them. It’d been a lucky victory, completely unearned. Ten years and a bunch of unprepared children and a man forced back into the Ranger program after having been forced out before Pentecost even died. And Hermann. Shao was probably running around doing something, too, since she never could resist the opportunity to stick it to him and being meddlesome and overly involved was half of her personality. 

He doubted she was still around, though. Shao was the kind of woman who looked at all the deaths in the old kaiju war and thought ‘no one should have to die fighting monsters’ and immediately turned that noble goal into an excuse to build herself an empire and promote fascism everywhere she went. 

The bad publicity of what he had done, the way he had so thoroughly outsmarted and humiliated her, would have been enough to get her to help try to contain the damage even without her not wanting the destruction of anything and everything she had ever known. Liwen Shao: secretly sentimental. Who would have thought? 

But now? When the plan had failed and the backup plans were out there unfinished and unable to be set into motion and he was here with the PPDC? He would very much bet that she had left the PPDC before he had even regained consciousness after Raleigh’s knock-off had punched him in the fact like some sort of overgrown schoolyard bully. 

Hermann hadn’t left. 

Hermann was sitting across from Newt now in the lovely accommodations the PPDC had given him. 

The cliché strapped to a chair without even the blood wiped from his face in a mostly dark and unnecessarily large room had only lasted as long as it had taken Hermann to come see him (which was, at a guess, five minutes after Pentecost Jr had declared they were going to try and actually attack the Anteverse themselves and wipe themselves out that way instead of waiting for the Anteverse to come to them. Stupid but considerate and you almost had to appreciate that). Hermann had begun dialing numbers on his phone before he had even finished saying hello. 

Now Newt had a well-lit glass box with a bed, a toilet and sink, a shower, and a comfortable armchair that matched the chair just outside the box. 

And he also had cuffs he was required to put his hands into whenever anyone entered the cell or he was to leave it. 

“Newton,” Hermann greeted as he walked into the room and settled delicately into his chair. 

“Hermann,” Newt responded because a greeting merited some sort of reciprocation. 

Hermann’s face fell slightly at the daily disappointment that was Newt not appearing to have a strong enough reaction to his presence. 

At some point, he really should just give it up. Or at least adjust his expectations. The man had made a career of predicting a breach from an alien dimension with incredible accuracy and now he couldn’t even predict how Newt would likely react to his presence. It wasn’t as though he had a week and a half’s worth of data points to aid him in these predictions or anything. 

“How…” Hermann trailed off, looking abashed. He took a breath. “How are you, Newton?” 

Newt levelled an unimpressed look at him. Hermann asked that every day. 

Hermann flushed and looked down. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. This is hard. And I know it must be so much harder for you than for me and me sitting here kvetching because I feel awkward trying to talk to you after so long and after everything that’s happened.” 

Newt would never call himself an expert on human behavior or body language and while he had once been the most renowned Hermann expert in the world that time had long-since passed. Well, hopefully had passed. For Hermann’s sake if nothing else. 

Still, however distant he was from Hermann he could still see that he was distressed. Not so much about the awkwardness of the situation (Hermann had been in countless awkward situations in his life and even more so when Newt happened to be around) but because he had thought that the war was over and Newt was happy and successful and moving on with his life and now he discovered that Newt’s emotions were a mixed bag, his thoughts had never left the kaiju or their shared masters, and Hermann had worked very hard to sabotage all of Newt’s success. 

He knew that. He knew he should feel guilty about it. Should feel a pang of…sadness? Sympathy? Compassion? Whatever the difference even was between those two. 

But he didn’t. 

The Precursors had shut him off from that part of himself. All he could feel was an icy sort of calm. Their words couldn’t reach him. They didn’t matter. He needed to focus on planning a way to escape and enact Plan B. Failing that, he needed to learn as much as possible about the PPDC, their resources, and whatever battle plans they were making. Attempt to sabotage them however he could, feed them false information if they were foolish enough to trust him. 

Newt couldn’t say he liked the fact that there was such a detailed contingency plan for his failure but, in the end, the precursors were right. They always were, whether he liked it or not. He was perhaps the most important human alive (or had been? He had failed and who knew how well he would be able to rectify that) but he was still just a weak human with all of the usual human limitations. 

He could not break the walls of the cell with anything he had with him (slow, methodical experiments had proven that). The door did not open from the inside. The door would not open if he was unrestrained. He was still in the process of learning to free his hands from the restraints. And that was only leaving the cell. If he did manage to get out he would still need to escape a military base that was heavily armed if not completely repaired and dozens of soldiers who would not hesitate to kill him. 

If he looked like Chuck or Raleigh or whoever that new guy was then he wouldn’t have this problem. He could just blend in and slip right out the door and it would take weeks for anyone to figure it out. 

“Newton.” 

Newt refocused his attention. “Yes?” 

“Am I ever going to get you back?” 

Now that was a real wham shot. He could perfectly imagine (recall, really) how those words would have hit him if he were capable of feeling them. 

As it was, it was a rather interesting question. 

“I suppose it depends on what you mean by that,” Newt replied. “Will you physically have me back? I’m a little bit kidnapped here. Not a very healthy relationship, sure, but I’m here and possession is like nine tenths of the law or something. Probably more since this is a fascist military organization that doesn’t bother with things like ‘rights’ or ‘due process’ if it inconveniences them.” 

“Kidnapped,” Hermann repeated. “That is certainly one way to reframe what has happened here.” 

Newt shrugged. “What can I say? I didn’t consent to be here.” 

“I suppose you view prisons as mass hostage centers then?” 

Another shrug. “I’m not that invested in the…I don’t want to say metaphor but I never was an English kind of guy so I couldn’t tell you what part of speech or figurative device or whatever I mean. But if I wanted to take that concept and broaden its applications then yes I would.” 

“It is a bit of a relief to hear you refer to the PPDC as fascists, I must admit,” Hermann said, a small smile appearing slowly on his face. 

A little strange since he worked for them still. And, yes, it made sense he would have stayed after the Megakaiju but he had stayed for years before. Did he really have no ambition or idea for what he wanted to do with his life? Was he that stuck without Newt? It could have been pitiable. 

Hermann had never before agreed (or tolerated that well) when Newt accused the PPDC of fascism. Perhaps it was the jaegers being used to intimidate civilians and enforce their will that changed that. Of course, with an organization heading in that direction there were bound to be other instances that wouldn’t have sat well with him. 

And, while it really didn’t matter, if Newt ever stopped speculating and trying to figure everything out then he could safely be declared dead. 

“Is it?” 

“I was…well, actually, I could barely manage some annoyance under the circumstances when you pushed Marshall Hansen aside while calling him a fascist so we could warn them that Pentecost’s plan wouldn’t work the way they were planning on going about it,” Hermann said. “Still, I haven’t heard anything of the sort from you in years. And while it’s true that we…haven’t spoken as much as we should have and Liwen was almost pleased to be able to fire you, I gather that this was not sentiment that you have been expressing of late.” 

Oh, poor, sweet, hopeful Hermann. 

It could be called objectively sad, he decided. Objectively because he lacked the emotion to actually feel that but the situation lined up well enough with things that had been sad in the past. It could have been heart-wrenching once. 

Now there was nothing. 

“I never changed my mind about that,” Newt told him. “It stopped mattering, sometimes entirely. Time and place, you know? I’m not _that_ bad with people. Don’t you even dare start.” 

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Hermann said but Newt didn’t trust the look in his eyes one bit. “But you were saying it depended what I meant about if I’d be able to get you back. I quite agree that physically you are here and physically here I hope you will stay. Well. Metaphorically here. I do intend to get you out of this cell then out of the PPDC as soon as I believe it is reasonable to do so. My timeline…might not quite line up with theirs.” 

It didn’t matter. Both of these plans were too far into the future but if he were to accept such a dichotomy then obviously leaving sooner was better. 

It was strange (or at least as far as Newt remembered) for Hermann to encourage Newt’s rambling and straying from the point. Now not only was he showing no signs of dissatisfaction but he outright requested for Newt to continue. 

What was that? That was strange. 

Had Hermann changed that much in the years he was gone? It couldn’t have been something he picked up from Newt. His own rambling aside, he had little patience for the rambling of others. From his experience, it certainly wasn’t from the precursors. Had he mellowed out with age? With the least stressful years he’d had since his early twenties? Or was it only Newt he wanted to listen to? This was probably their most productive conversation to date, if only because Hermann had managed to stumble upon a question Newt found interesting. 

Or perhaps he really wanted to know if Newt thought that Hermann would be able to get what he wanted. 

Well, he wouldn’t. No matter how this ended, what Hermann wanted was completely impossible. 

“Will you be able to get the precursors out of my head?” Newt asked rhetorically. “I’ll be honest, I have no clue. Regular drifting reinforces the connection, of course, but things with the precursors aren’t exactly the same as things with humans. Humans aren’t compatible, they just don’t drift. Not in the old days. It doesn’t almost kill them. And no matter how often they drift, there’s never any transfer of control. Likely there will be some sort of latency or fading or I don’t even know what, or else all these drifts since they really became a part of me really were just for my benefit. No one knows. Not even them. So maybe. Maybe the precursors completely leave my head someday. Maybe they’ll stay as deeply entrenched as ever. Maybe it’ll be something in between.”

Hermann looked stricken. 

“What?” Newt asked automatically. 

“They,” Hermann murmured. 

“What are you talking about?” 

Hermann visibly shook himself. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t suppose you have any feelings on the matter?” 

Newt could have laughed. He shrugged instead. “What are you hoping to hear? Yes, I desperately want to be free of the vile precursors! No, I have given my life over to them and might as well die if they are gone!” 

“What I want is to hear the truth,” Hermann said firmly. “Though I cannot pretend I do not have my hopes about what the truth is. Still, as a scientist, I will not allow those hopes to blind me.” 

Newt snorted. “Please. You’re not here as a scientist.” 

Hermann leaned forward in his chair and looked at Newt very intently. “Then what, pray tell, am I here for?” 

“My welfare,” Newt said dryly. “Nay, my reclamation.” 

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Dickens. Cute.” 

Newt smiled brightly at him. “I like to think so.” 

Any momentary levity faded from Hermann’s countenance. “Newton.” 

“I’m not sure how you’d even know,” Newt told him. “I mean, we all know the probable play is at some point the precursors appear to leave my mind and I’m free.” He made a face. “I don’t really like the connotations there. Free. Like I’m a slave here and they’re some invading force taking over my mind.” 

“I don’t like the connotations, either,” Hermann said. “But aren’t they both true?” 

“No,” Newt said. “They’re not.” 

Newt hadn’t seen Hermann look that skeptical since the time he had tried to explain why really, if you thought about it, the right combination of energy drinks could keep you functional for a solid week if need be. “So if you wanted this all to be over, if you wanted them gone, they would respect that and leave?” 

Newt didn’t even deign to dignify that with an answer. “I don’t want them gone.” 

Hermann threw a rather undeserved look of deep disappointment Newt’s way. “Are you seriously suggesting you’re happy in slavery therefore you aren’t a slave?” 

“I think you know that I’m not.” 

“A bird in a cage, no matter how gilded the cage or how happy the bird, is still trapped. Its owners may try their best to keep it content and provide everything it wants or needs, save freedom, but its happiness is incidental because at the end of the day you simply aren’t going to let it go free no matter what it wants.” 

Newt was quiet for a moment. Finally, he said, “I will forgive the analogy because you compared me to a dinosaur.” 

“I did not. I compared you to a bird.” 

“Don’t make me have this argument again, you know damn well that birds are dinosaurs. And technically reptiles.” 

“I was going to compare you to a rat in a trap but they’re usually less content with their lot and I know how you get when people compare your appearance to that of small mammals,” Hermann said magnanimously. 

“I did this to myself,” Newt said. “And at some point I knew I was doing it. And I still did.” 

“You didn’t consent to it,” Hermann said immediately. 

Newt did laugh then. “Pretty sure I did. And pretty sure I kept consenting to it every time afterwards.” 

“There is no meaningful consent without the opportunity to say no. A real no that is respected and listened to.” 

Newt rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Rogers. I had choices. Maybe they weren’t made in a vacuum but no choice ever is and yet here I stand. Well, actually, you know, I’m sitting but you know what I mean.” 

“If you said no now would it be respected? Consent once is not consent always. You can always change your mind.” 

“Not always,” Newt disagreed. “Where was Chuck’s chance to change his mind once he was out there with Pentecost? Where was Mako’s chance when my jaeger went after her helicopter? Hell, where was Tendo’s choice once the baby was born?” 

Hermann’s hands gripped the edge of his chair so tightly Newt thought he could hear something crack. “This is different.” 

“This is irrelevant,” Newt disagreed. “I’m not feeling guilty here, pal. Save it for my competency hearing. If I ever do start feeling guilty, which, you know, there’s a good chance I might depending on how this whole drift withdrawal thing goes, I’ll try to keep all of this in mind. I’m also putting my request in now for every very special episode from the 90s. If I don’t get Jessie’s caffeine pill freak out from Saved by the Bell I’m going to be pissed.” 

Hermann, bless him, actually took out a pen and small notebook and began to write. 

“So. Either the Precursors are gone or they do a passable imitation of them leaving. Guess it depends how good their acting skills are. Probably better than mine though I really couldn’t say. But, anyway, who even knows what it looks like with them leaving? I’ve seen enough depictions of drug withdrawal to have some ideas where to start and the rest is just winging it.” 

Hermann looked up from his notes. “Why are you planting the idea that the person I end up with at the end of what appears to be a successful Precursor withdrawal may not be you? That’s acting against your own interests, isn’t it? Unless you’re willing to concede – or at least consider the possibility, even only to yourself – that what you want and what they want aren’t the same. That what’s good for them is catastrophic for you and that your reclamation, as it were, depends on their plans being foiled in every sense of the word?” 

He looked so earnest there. So desperate. 

It wasn’t true. He didn’t want them gone. He didn’t want them there. He didn’t really want anything right then except to continue where he had left off. The rest didn’t matter. 

Hermann didn’t matter but, true to form, it did not look like he was about to take that for an answer. 

“It’s not that deep, Hermann. Acting against my own interests is kind of my thing, you know? It’s why I called you an asshole twice in the first five minutes of meeting you in person.” 

Hermann closed his eyes. “I thought you said that you did that because I was an asshole.”

Newt shrugged. “Well, yeah, but I didn’t have to say it.” 

“We will, of course, not just take your word for it,” Hermann said, opening his eyes again. “I think we can be fairly sure that should the Precursors appear directly again we will be able to tell but as for them being there and hiding? Of course we’re going to do tests.” 

“Tests,” Newt scoffed. “What kind of tests? Psychological assessments? I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology and I’m thorough. None of those are valid with me.” 

“Brain scans would be.” 

Newt laughed. “Oh, yes. Brain scans. What’s it going to show? A perfectly normal human brain? I think that’s a bit naïve, don’t you? Your brain never goes back to what it once was after a drift. Raleigh’s still feeling it. Will you see a change and what appears to be signs of the precursors fading? Perhaps. Might even be true. But you won’t know if their hold has weakened but is staying stable or if on the brain scan it only lights up if they assert themselves. And even if they don’t know what the right thing to do is, to convince you, we’ve got time. All the time in the world until there is no time in the world.” 

“You sound like you want to spend the rest of your life locked up here,” Hermann observed, somewhat dispassionately.

Newt shuddered. “Want to? No, of course not. I might actually go insane. If I’m not already. If that’s not too pejorative of a term to use. I need the stimulation, man. You know that. And I don’t think alien overlords who want me to destroy everything is the kind of thing you’d approve of.” 

“I would never leave you to rot in a place like this,” Hermann promised softly. 

“I know,” Newt said matter-of-factly. “You’re very predictable.” 

“You’ve never been,” Hermann replied. “Not unless you count that if there is a bad decision to be made, no matter how small or life-destroying it is, you will find a way to make it.” 

“Ouch. That almost hurt,” Newt said, smirking. 

“Newton,” Hermann said quietly. 

Newt waited but Hermann didn’t seem like he was going to continue. 

Well, Newt had nothing to say and he could wait him out. 

“Newton,” Hermann said again after what felt like an eternity. “Am I ever going to get you back?” 

“No.” 

Something pained flashed across Hermann’s face. “No?” 

“No,” Newt repeated. “I’m never going to be the same, man. Even IF, and these are a lot of ifs and we all know the more variables the worse the odds. Even if I stay here until the precursors completely fade from my mind and you can convince the powers that be to let me go on my merry way and all that jazz…I’m never going to be the same. I’m never going to be that guy from that night. From all the nights that followed. Not to be all dramatical but that man is dead, Hermann, and he’s never coming back no matter if I do. Though there really is no coming back because the me I am now never was there with you and never really went anywhere. Even if the me I am now comes to you. It won’t be the same.” 

Hermann nodded slowly, clearly considering Newt’s words. “I don’t want it to be the same.” 

Newt didn’t remember the last time he had laughed this much in such a short span of time and wasn’t that objectively sad as in pathetic? Nothing about this was funny and he wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it if it was. “Bull fucking shit.” 

“No, it’s true,” Hermann insisted. “Newton, you cannot possibly think that any of us were trapped in amber during all this time. We are all very different men than we were back then and I have no desire to go back.” 

Newt rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes, you’ve changed so much. You have hobbies and collections and a little mess to prove there’s life in the rooms you use. You are less a slave to rules and don’t blindly follow and respect anyone with a fancy title and you know how to let people know you care about them. All very good things. Well, you may disagree with me about the mess. That’s not the same as what’s happened to me and you know it.” 

“No,” Hermann allowed. “But I am being very upfront with how the way you are now is not the way I intend to leave you. Who you are now is going to change.” 

“Life is change,” Newt agreed readily. “But that isn’t what you meant. If the precursors leave, I’m not who I am ten years ago.” 

“I already told you that I’m okay with that. That, in fact, I don’t want you to go back to who you were.” 

“Who am I without the precursors, Hermann?” Newt challenged. 

Hermann looked stricken. “Newton…you can’t possibly mean that. The precursors do not define you. They hinder you and are trying to destroy you. You-”

Newt rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. Though, to be fair, I’m not entirely sure the answer to the question myself. Without the precursors and not being exactly who I was before…I imagine there’s a lot of trauma I’ll need to unpack. Lots of maladaptive coping skills and whatever parts of who I am now are here to stay because, however they came about, they are who I am now. Just a general mess.” 

“You can’t scare me away, Newton,” Hermann said. “You couldn’t then and you most certainly can’t now.” 

“No, that I do believe,” Newt said. “Just that if you really expect me to believe that all of that nonsense is what you actually want instead of just being what you’ll probably get stuck with…well there’s really only a few options. You’re a liar. You’re delusional. You’re feeling some mad Munchausen by proxy – well factitious disorder to be more precise but that name kind of loses something, you know? Or maybe you’re just that much of an asshole that you’d rather me be a miserable wreck than something close to happy.” 

Hermann opened his mouth then closed it again, His hands, Newt noted, were trembling. 

He didn’t have anything to say to that and Newt didn’t expect him to. 

It was pretty obvious why Hermann kept insisting that he didn’t want who Newt was years ago. It was pointless, after all, since nothing short of maybe flat-out erasing his memory of the last ten years would accomplish that. Or maybe even that wouldn’t work. Maybe even without the memories the physical changes and the lingering drift connections would remain the same and the only difference was that he just wouldn’t understand _why_. 

Well, he hadn’t understood why or how or even what or who for a good deal of it. But that wasn’t exactly a place to plan to go back to. 

It would just be cruel for Hermann to tell Newt he wanted the man he’d been the night they had drifted. And Hermann could be cruel, oh he could be devastatingly so, but not when he thought Newt was vulnerable and in desperate need of salvation. 

If Hermann did, in fact, wish Newt was who he was before he would hate himself for the very thought and Newt had seen a lot of things from Hermann lately but self-hatred was not one of them. Pointless guilt, horror, heartbreak, sure. But if the thought had crossed Hermann’s mind once it would have crossed his mind in Newt’s presence and it clearly hadn’t. So Hermann was lying to himself, lying so thoroughly even he believed it. But then, it wasn’t a lie if you believed it. George Costanza had taught him that. 

And Hermann wasn’t the man he weas ten years ago, either, though from what Newt had seen it was a change for the better. Everyone could see that. 

People didn’t really think the same when it came to Newt. 

Hermann had spent years chasing after any sort of sign that Newt saw him as something other than a nuisance or an unwanted ghost from his past. Sometimes Newt thought Hermann would have taken Newt just about any way except with a side of Anteverse. But it wasn’t like there were other options. 

“I just want you to be safe,” Hermann said finally. “And after that for you to be happy.” 

Newt laughed. “Might as well ask for the moon while you’re at it.” 

“I know it’s…difficult now. But it’s getting better. It has to be getting better,” Hermann said softly, almost to himself. “At least we know now. At least they can’t use you to try and destroy us anymore. Whatever happens, it will not be your fault.” 

“And it would have been if I’d succeeded a few days back?”

A very cross look came over Hermann’s face. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it. But it would have been your mind and your hands and your identity tied to it and now it won’t be.” 

“You say as if the precursors, even if I remain stuck here, will have to start from zero,” Newt said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering to pretend you’re being selfless here.” 

Hermann blinked at him. “I beg pardon? I never said anything about selflessness.” 

“Not in so many words but come on. All this about my safety and my happiness? Where, exactly, do you fit into this little fantasy?” 

Hermann was quiet for a long time before he answered. “Ideally, I’m here doing everything in my power to make it happen. But beyond that, after that…well that’s up to you, isn’t it?” 

“Really?” Newt asked skeptically. “All of that, singlehandedly pulling me back from the brink, and you’d let me just run off and leave you behind again?” 

A flash of real anger in Hermann’s eyes then. “Despite what you or whoever else might think, I’m not doing this so I can have another chance to fuck an old crush. Whatever I may or may want is secondary. You have always been a good man, no matter what knots you’ve been twisted into now, and even if you hadn’t you are still a man. You may not have the capacity to want freedom, or to at least admit to it, right now but you deserve that and so I’m going to give it to you.” 

“And if things had been the same but it wasn’t me, it was Shao? And you hadn’t gotten a chance to save the world together or whatever kind of fun bonding activities I’m sure you two did? I always did think you’d get along. Of course I hated her on sight. Make of that what you will.” 

“Maybe I would be less…invested. Maybe it would be less personal. But I’d like to think I would still be here doing my best because it’s the right thing to do and anyone so used by the precursors would deserve that.” 

“I’m sure you do,” Newt said. 

Hermann was still here and he was getting very noble now and Newt didn’t care for it. 

“You think you love me,” he said. 

Hermann stilled. “I have never said anything of the sort.” 

“You never had to,” Newt said. “I mean, at one point I knew you better than anyone else in the world. At one point I knew you better than I knew myself. And, right now, you think you love me. You can deny it if you want, it really doesn’t matter.” 

“Why do you keep saying that I think I love you?” Hermann asked. “I could understand if you said you think I love you or that I love you or what have you but I think I love you? It’s…well it could be a lot of things depending on why you’re saying it but none of those are good.” 

“I mean, if I absolutely must clarify a perfectly clear statement,” Newt said, rolling his eyes. “I said you think you love me because you think that you love me.”

“Think,” Hermann repeated. “As opposed to what? Feel? Are you telling me I’m wrong? Is this some kind of ‘woe is me, I’m unlovable’ nonsense? Because I think we as a society have proven that literally anything can be loved. Even your-”

“If you say I love the kaiju then I swear to God, Hermann,” Newt interrupted, making sure his voice was just a little louder than Hermann’s. 

Hermann looked strangely pleased at that. 

“That wasn’t what I meant, anyway,” Newt said. “How people feel about things has way more to do with the person doing the feeling than the object of that feeling. Subject? Whichever. I mean, you fell in love with who I was a decade ago. And I’m not saying you, I don’t know, stared up at the sky every night pining or whatever. But you can’t tell me you didn’t romanticize all that time and me in general. When I was so very different than who I had been and you were honest-to-God _disappointed_ I didn’t throw down with your dad that time. We both know that if I actually had, or if I had and you hadn’t been so fucking nostalgic, you would have been mortified even if you had agreed with every word.” 

“A little bit of romanticization is common in these things or so I’m told. And my father richly deserved that tongue-lashing you never gave him.”

“You could have done it yourself,” Newt said. 

Hermann shook his head. “I lack your flair for the theatrical and my father isn’t the sort of man to take the criticism of his children to heart.” 

“You don’t know me,” Newt said. “You don’t love the me before you whose biggest regret is not succeeding last week. You love the memory and the potential and how seeing me still makes you feel, even after all this time and with all of this between us. So forgive me if I’m not interested in hearing about it.” 

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Hermann said evenly. “You keep telling me that all these things don’t matter. I don’t really agree but here’s one of my own. Whether I do really know or love you or just my conception and whether or not I remain blind or become disillusioned or get to know and love you again, it really does not matter. Not right now. One day it may matter a great deal, at least depending on where you stand on the matter. But for right now, I could be anywhere from completely deluded to truly in love and it changes nothing. Right now, you’re not anywhere close to being reasonably expected to deal with my interests and I would be a fool to ask it of you.” 

It would figure that Newt would get all these tender words when he was utterly incapable of appreciating them. 

That was really the thing. He knew that the words should move him to tears. It should make him hide his face and not know whether to smile or cry or throw things. It should make him order Hermann from the room so he could have a minute unobserved (of sorts. He was being recorded at all times he was pretty sure) and rage against Hermann for putting this on him even when he was trying not to and even though Newt had taken it out of the realm of subtext. 

But it didn’t. It couldn’t. 

And that was the thing, too. The fact that a part of himself had been shut off from him, the fact that parts of himself were always shut off from him and had been for longer than he had even been a part of the PPDC should frustrate him. It should enrage him, even. It should make him more depressed and more furious than he had even been in his life, even more so than things falling apart with Hermann or Monica never giving a damn or funding being cut. 

But it didn’t. It couldn’t. 

The part of himself that was capable of that was being cut off from himself, too. Most of it was now. 

And he knew that and he knew how he should be responding, how he wasn’t entirely sure he would be responding if he had been able to because he recognized that something was very much not right with him. 

But that didn’t mean he could. 

He didn’t even want to, not really. Not on an emotional level. 

Was it that he wanted to want to? Wanted to want to want to? However many want tos he had to throw in there. 

The person that he was, the last really clear image of himself that he had, had a bad habit of doing things specifically because he was told he shouldn’t or couldn’t. He had probably fallen for reverse psychology all the time and made some truly bad decisions because of it. 

He couldn’t even want things to be different. 

Couldn’t even want Hermann to stay or go or love him or blame him or anything except a vague sense of wanting Hermann to stop interfering in the plan. 

He couldn’t feel it. 

But the precursors weren’t interested in his movements or his conversations these days. He didn’t remember anything that might have hurt their cause. 

He couldn’t feel it but he could do one thing. 

And, with no real reason to do so, he still decided that he was going to do exactly that. 

Just because. 

No real reason to, no real reason not to, he still had to make a decision and even if he didn’t completely understand it himself this was what something somewhere made him think was the right choice. 

“I don’t suppose I can stop you from spending your time on this. On making me more human.” 

“That’s not exactly how I would put it but, no, you’re right. You can’t. You could still try, though,” Hermann said. 

A grin he couldn’t feel ghosted over his lips. “Nah. I think I’ll see how you do.” 

The fragile hope in Hermann’s eyes didn’t move Newt at all but one day it might. 

And in the meantime, it seemed he had nothing but time. 

Despite what the precursors and Shao and almost everyone it seemed had wanted, he was still here. 

And, impossibly, so was Hermann.


End file.
